I'm a bit confused about some Conveyancing Charges

loveandlight

I am buying a house and my solicitor is intending to charge £20 + VAT as an archive fee. What is this for?

Also I am being charged Land Charge Search fee £6.00 and Land Registry Search Fee £6.00. Does anyone know what these charges are for and would they apply to two people whereas there is just me buying?

My solicitor is also intending to charge £75+VAT for completing the SDLT form but I will do this myself.

Thanks for your help.

Hippychick

Not sure why he is charging you the archive fee unless he is retaining any documents for you? maybe speak to him and state you will store any documents yourself.

The 2 £6 fees are for searches which are required at HM Land Registry before completion, one is to ensure you aren't bankrupt, the other is to check that the vendors haven't taken out any more loans etc against the property since the contract papers were sent out.

Complete the SDLT form if you wish but they are quite complex so make sure you know and fully understand what the correct codes etc are, also worth checking to see if your mortgage lender will let you complete it or if they want your solicitor to do it.

Richard_Webster

The 2 £6 fees are for searches which are required at HM Land Registry before completion, one is to ensure you aren't bankrupt, the other is to check that the vendors haven't taken out any more loans etc against the property since the contract papers were sent out.

It only costs £4 to do a LR search on-line and £2 for a bankruptcy search.

If an entry shows on a bankruptcy search which is very possible as they are filed against surnames and people who are made bankrupt are often secretive about their first names so the person suing gets a judgment against Mr Smith and proceeds to bankrupt him. There are therefore lots of bankrupts Smiths so if we do the search at the last moment and find that the borrower could be the person shown as bankrupt we then have to spend time checking further which is sometimes difficult to do in the last days before a completion. therefore some firms such as mine do such a search at an early stage so we can eliminate the false positives before it it is too late - this costs an extra £2 - but where the third £2 comes from I don't know.

Completing the SDLT form and Archive Fee are typical scams to make the fees look lower than they really are!